A violent page-turner with compelling imagery that will leave readers breathless.
In Icelandic author Simonar’s thriller, set largely in the Washington, D.C., area, a renowned doctor encounters international conspiracies, political intrigue, ruthless murders, and billion-dollar deals.
At 32 years of age, Dr. Caroline Glyn is already a world authority on malignant cells, and her research may be getting closer to identifying a cure for cancer. But her personal life is unraveling; she’s a widow and single mother after her doctor husband died of a brain tumor, and now she’s faced with mounting debt and the very real chance that her research funding will end soon. While dropping off her 5-year-old daughter, Mary, at a prestigious school in Georgetown, she meets the father of Mary’s friend: an elderly Russian man who goes by the name Rykov and says that he works for a multinational trading company. He and Glyn unexpectedly bond, due to their shared feelings of loss; his wife also died from cancer. When Glyn returns to pick up Mary later that afternoon, however, the mother and daughter witness the brutal killing of Rykov and his child in an apparent hit—but before the old man dies, he grabs Glyn’s hand and inexplicably transfers his essence into her consciousness. Soon, Glyn, through conversations with FBI Special Agent Carl Smith, discovers that Rykov was the head of the original Russian Mafia and was one of the most powerful, ruthless criminal masterminds in the world. Various groups maneuver to silence Glyn—she was the only one who saw Rykov’s killers, and, as a result, Mary is abducted. With her daughter missing—and her sanity seemingly fragmenting as an infamous criminal’s thoughts and memories blend with her own—Glyn sets out on a quest for vengeance.
Over the course of this novel, Simonar presents a thriller tale that’s absolutely relentless in its pacing. Indeed, he makes sure that the action is virtually nonstop from the first page to the last, while also establishing a dark crime fiction tone that can be decidedly brutal at times. However, it’s the clarity and purity of the writing, which is courageously uninhibited in style and complemented by forceful imagery, that makes this novel so compulsively readable throughout. For example, here’s a representative passage, after Rykov is killed in front of Glyn: “She drifted, eerily watching the blood seep out of the old man. It collected in a puddle that slowly circled the crushed cherry blossoms the girls had dropped on the asphalt. In curious detachment, Caroline marveled at how beautifully the two colors mingled, dark heavy red against the fleeting pink of a Washington spring.” Readers may have two minor criticisms with the work, however. First, there is the fact that the story never adequately explains how Rykov’s essence was transferred to Glyn, which some may find bothersome; and second, there are some occasional distracting errors in grammar over the course of the book. However, these elements are not likely to hinder readers’ overall enjoyment of this Beltway thriller.
A violent page-turner with compelling imagery that will leave readers breathless.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-9197966788
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Eventhor Media
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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